NGE Gospel of Serpents
by Flash69
Summary: A continuation Fic set Eight years after the end. The time for EVA's and Angels is over, or is it? Shinji, Asuka and Rei live peacefully in Tokyo IV, working for the PIRO, but who is Tenshi Yamamoto? (SA ROC) (Still trying to tone down his Mary-Sueness)
1. Default Chapter

Neon Genesis Evangelion characters and situations created and Copyright

by Gainax, Project Eva, ADV Films - Used without permission

NGE-Gospel of the Serpent storyline copyright 2003-2004 by Michael Ward

Minimum spoilers ahoy!

You want to know how this happened? Well, first you take a vague but fairly competent grasp of Eva, throw in a Mary-Sue (it's weird, I hate reading fics with OC's in them, but whenever I write fanfiction it always has them! What the heck is wrong with me!?) compound everyone's misery by only having seen death and rebirth and not the actual end of EVA, with most of my knowledge of the movie coming from what I've read in fanfiction. Add in some pre-exam tension and voila! 

This by the way, is my disclaimer for the following fic's shortcomings. 

Now don't get me wrong, I like this story, really, it's just, I know, and all of you who have ever read any of my other works (all two of you…) will know, is that I haven't finished a long story in my life…

So barring this being a fantastic success garnering massive reviews and praise, it's unlikely I'm going to finish it.

Sorry.

But anyway, like all my author notes, I've rambled on for way too long, so please just enjoy the fic.

NGE – Gospel of the Serpent

By Flash69

I stand alone

Atop the legend of Gilgamesh

There is no sound

Yet my roar echoes from every ear that is unalive

I see the world begin again

But I cannot remember

I cannot live until I know

Where is she

Who my soul belongs to?

Tenshi Yamamoto _The_ Inverse Testament,_ G3n3sis 8_

**Chapter 1**

The rain was always heaviest in the autumn. It poured down invincible, soaking the city and saturating it with filthy polluted water from heaven. 

Besieged by black cloud and stained by rain, the city of Tokyo IV however remained unflinching, resolute and sparkling with a thousand tiny lights. On this wet night most travelled by car, or monorail, but not for one man. On the quiet back streets, there was no one but the darkness and the man, protected from the rain by a black umbrella. He moved continuously and with purpose, walking down the street, until he came to an apartment building, he then took to the stairs and ascended the blocky habitation to the third floor. He then took a door card from his pocket and slid it through the reader in front of the fifty-first door. The door obediently slid open and the man walked into his black apartment. He flapped his umbrella dry, took off his coat and hung it up, with a hiss the door behind him closed. 

The man then fell to his knees and wept the loss of the thing that he could no longer remember but still held dearest to all things in his heart. 

This man was Tenshi Yamamoto. 

The lightning illuminated his room and revealed hundreds of paintings, nailed to the walls, beautiful art he made himself, full of sorrowful images and memories without names. He threw his head back and roared. 

The sound echoed across building, and a thousand other tiny voices no less potent joined in chorus and were silent forever.

In an apartment nearby, Rei Ikari woke up more abruptly than she was used to. Usually she woke in a more gentle fashion at seven o' clock sharp. She would then get up, have a shower, get dressed and then go to her place of employment at PIRO (the Post Impact Restoration Organization) in a newly reclaimed Central Dogma. Not at all like now, where she was violently thrust awake by the sound of torment at three in the morning. 

"Did I eat something strange perhaps?" she quietly mused.

She decided to go to the bathroom for a drink of water and then back to bed.

In the room next to hers Shinji Ikari was not fully awake, he was rather in the limbo between sleep and wakefulness, a level of consciousness where although he was aware, he was unable to do anything. Until however, he registered a faint light coming from outside. He broke his equilibrium and rose to wakefulness as he slowly shifted to look at his red LCD clock. 

"That's odd, why's Rei awake so early?" he mumbled.

"It's probably nothing go back to sleep." Came the muffled reply beside him.

This was recent development, until eight months ago Shinji slept alone. It was eight years after Third Impact, and it had taken him over seven to get as far as this with Asuka. 

He'd tried hard, but fate, or his own fears had often overridden him. It took him three years to actually tell her how he really felt. It took another year for her to actually believe him. 

"No, I'd better see just in case."

Ruffling of sheets and soft sound of footfalls on carpet and the gentle swish of a well oiled door, followed by the faint slap of bare foot upon lino with an accompanying "Ah! Cold!" (this is Shinji after all). 

Shinji poked his head around the bathroom door and saw Rei drinking a glass of water. 

"Are you okay Rei?"

"Yes, I am fine."

"It's just that your not usually up at three in the morning."

"I know, a sound from outside woke me up."

"Oh… well… OK, goodnight Rei!"

"Goodnight Shinji."

More slaps of barefoot on lino, a swish of a door closing, more muffled footsteps and more rustling of bedcovers. 

"You worry too much about your sister." Commented Asuka, hers eyes still closed, her body unmoving from their warm comfortable position under the covers.

There was a pause as the wheels in Shinji's head turned for a second. 

"Why are you awake this early Asuka?"

Silence.

"Are the nightmares back Asuka?" he asked.

More silence.

Shinji moved over towards her and wrapped his arms around her warm frame and hugged her from behind. He discovered her to be trembling slightly, almost imperceptibly. After a few minutes she gradually stopped and let sleep take her. A short while afterwards Shinji did the same.

"Oh Yesod! When you shine with the virtue of independence, what brilliance you are! "

Tenshi Yamamoto, The _Inverse Testament S3phiroth 1:8    _

It was morning. 

Tenshi knew this to be the case, as pale light filtered through his single window, under which he had cried himself to sleep in the foetal position. 

His amnesia was really beginning to tear him apart. He was Tenshi Yamatato, the Devil of Bali, former UN Commando operative, or was he? He had no memories of it, but was told that it was true, something however, told him this was nowhere near the truth, or was it?

There was a knocking at the door, and Tenshi merely grunted in it's general direction as a reply. The knocking persisted and Tenshi unfolded himself from his uncomfortable position and staggered in his dishevelled state towards the closed portal to the outside world and answered it.  

"Tenshi Yamamoto?" the looming black silhouette in his doorframe inquired.

"Yes?"

"You have been reactivated."

"But I still remember nothing."

"Irrelevant"

His papers were roughly shoved to him and he grasped at them. The shadow departed and his door closed behind him. Tenshi fell to the floor.

"I cannot do this, I cannot do this, I cannot…" 

He looked over his papers, apparently he was to report to the EDF base in northern Tokyo IV, the St Stephen Base. 

"St Stephen, but that's a space centre…?" 

He thought back to his earliest memory, for second a wave darkness and helplessness washed over him, of devastation and flame. But in a instant it was replaced by his first real memory of the hospital. He'd woken up in the Tokyo IV National Hospital with absolutely no memory but his name about six months ago. He'd apparently spent the last 7 and a half years in a coma. He knew nothing, his body, seemed to remember sensations he couldn't place, phantom pains of loss he didn't understand, tormenting him. He couldn't remember being trained, but his body remember how it was supposed to move, although he could not remember how to become the Devil of Bali, he knew that at a moments notice, he could become that thing of dark legends. The more he asked, the less willing the army were to tell him what he had done in Bali, the less willing to tell him what he was. 

His instinct however told him that this was a minor point, and there were more important things to remember.

He looked at his orders once again.

"I can't go backwards, they won't let me stand still, so I must go forwards…"

There was almost a grin on the side of his face, his body seemed to surge slightly, lifted by the promise of intrigue and possible violence.

"This feeling… it's coming back!"

"In Gaf I wandered to long, and retained only my body and soul…"

Tenshi Yamamoto _The__ Inverse Testament G3n3sis 1:4_

Eight years ago, something strange happened. That was all most people really remembered about third impact, there were only three people on this earth who knew exactly what happened, they were Rei, Asuka and of course, Shinji Ikari. 

These three were the only people who truly knew what the real changes Shinji made to the world, the minor things that Shinji had done to make it perfect. 

The third impact did however damage the earth, not nearly as much as the second impact, but the world was wracked with minor earthquakes for a while, and then at the end of it, the earths axis had shifted back to the place it had occupied before the second impact, bringing the seasons back to Japan. 

Certain people had simply disappeared, in some cases whole buildings had ceased to be, with their inhabitants finding themselves on the earth where they used to work.

The more disturbing aspects of third impact involved the resurrection of much of the NERV personnel. Most people would have found being brought back to life a little unsettling, but most of the old NERV crew took it with an every day stoicism. 

I mean, when you work with giant robots designed to fight strange extra-terrestrial angels, not to mention all of those weird biblical references, it takes more than a little end of the world miracle to faze you… right?

With the Angels defeated, and third impact been and gone, there was very little reason for NERV to exist anymore. So in the Geofront, instead of an organization with apocryphal goals led by an arch-manipulator,  was the Post Impact Restoration Organization, led by a man who couldn't grow a beard if he tried. 

Right now that man was sitting in his fathers old chair and looking at the ceiling, wondering for the umpteenth time if he should have held his fathers soul back from the well of souls. Like he had with the SEELE council…

He'd sent an echo back through time, a message to the past, to the Council.

23 seconds before third impact his shadowy image appeared to them and proclaimed:

"This is a message, it cannot interact. I am now imbued with the powers of the third impact, I know everything, and I have found you wanting, for your sins your souls can no longer return to Gaf, you will be wiped away with the old world, never to return. I'm sorry… but we will not meet again."

To this day he had absolutely terrified himself when he did that, terrified at just how much he'd enjoyed thwarting their plans at the last minute and damning them to a fate worse than hell itself. 

That was one of the reasons he sealed most of the powers he gained in third impact, the only one he'd kept since then was divine understanding. 

He could instantly understand everything with divine accuracy and clarity. 

He used to have it on all the time but that had proved a… mistake. 

He now only used it for work.

"Commander Ikari, there's a message for you." Shinji shuddered, he hated it when people called him that, it reminded him of his father. 

"Thank you Maya." He said as he switched on the intercom.

"Commander, we require your talents in Section R again."

"Fine Nobuichi, I'm on my way now…"

In the crèche two eight year old children played as their mother watched on. On her way to the filing department, Rei walked past her, carrying a heavy load of papers. 

"Hello Rei!" came a cheerful cry behind her and the Azure haired girl, and she tried to manoeuvre herself to meet her greeter without dropping the papers. 

"Hello Miss Katsuragi, it's good to see you again." She looked over into the crèche, "And little Kintaro and Ritsuko too. Are you on you're lunch break?"

"Yeah. It's good to see you're doing well Rei." Rei graced the woman with one of her rare smiles "It's good to be doing well Miss Katsuragi." She then left the 38 year old women with her children. The last gift of Shinji, to the closest thing he'd ever had to a mother. 

As the blue haired girl continued on her way, Misato took another bite from her sandwich and watched her children play.

She knew more about Third Impact than she let on to most, for a start, she knew that she hadn't been pregnant before third impact, it was a medical impossibility. Secondly she had also found Kaji's notes, and they hadn't been easy to find. She knew most of what was supposed to happen during the Third Impact from them. 

Even now, the concept of her resurrection still unsettled her, and she just hoped that her children never had to put up with as much crap as she did. 

She sighed, "damn, I really wish I had a beer about now…"

Of course what really annoyed her about being resurrected was, if she could come back, why couldn't Kaji?

In crèche Ritsuko was playing with her dolls, and Kintaro was watching television with Adam, he was new, and a little strange. He was very quiet and very strong, Kintaro liked him because he was cool. But he gave her sister the creeps, which was uncool. Some other kids tried to bully him once, he'd lifted one over his head and whispered something in his ear, and the bullies never bothered any of them again. That was cool.

This was strange as it was the reverse for Adam, he found Kintaro creepy for some reason and Ritsuko kind of cool (for a girl). But he didn't talk much, and was happy just to have friends. So Adam continued to watch daytime television, with Kintaro and Ritsuko…

Tenshi showed his papers to the guard on the gate, the guard saluted his superior and waved him through. 

When he finished parking his car he was greeted by his superior.

He was leaning against the railings on the sidewalk. His white unchecked shirt flapped in the light breeze with his mop of light brown hair. His blue eyes glinting like sapphires.

"You must be Captain Tenshi Yamamoto."

He took a second to regard this man, for all his politeness, Tenshi got a bad vibe from him, that reminded him of indistinct negative things. This man exuded an aura that reminded him of death, and…rebirth?

"I guess I must be." He replied.

"I am Commander Yaezaki, pleased to meet you."

Every word was delicately placed, like a women arranging flowers, or a doctor his scalpels.

The bad vibes in his gut rose up and out of his mouth came the question

"Have we met before sir?"

Yaezaki unleashed a delicate smirk on the corners of his mouth.

"No Captain, I don't believe we have…"

And Tenshi Yamamoto knew that he was lying. 

As the Commander walked away from him, the name came unbidden into his mind

Koworu… 

"I did not remember many things, but I remembered him first…"

Tenshi Yamamoto _The__ Inverse Testament, G3n3sis 2:4_

**End of Part 01**

Be honest with me, how many of you saw that coming? Don't forget to review, even if it is just to say that you saw Koworu coming a mile off. If you're going to criticize, at least be constructive about it. Any other thoughts about the piece, did I get everyone in character? Have I portrayed the passage of time well? Is Tenshi too much of a Mary Sue for you? What kind of thing would you like to see next? What do you think is going on with Tenshi? Or Adam for that matter? 

Please just review, even if it's just to say you liked it. I thrive on attention (it's really quite pathetic really…) 

Adios!

Flash69


	2. Chapter 2

Neon Genesis Evangelion characters and situations created and Copyright

by Gainax, Project Eva, ADV Films - Used without permission

NGE-Gospel of the Serpent storyline copyright 2003-2004 by Michael Ward

Danger! Danger! A large portion of this fic was written whilst under the influence of just a _little too much vodka. Including this part. That's my excuse for the first half anyway._

The second half, well… this is where I started acting out of character isn't it? Rei's fairly easy, (I mean, she barely says anything…) Shinji's difficult because this isn't entirely the uberwuss Ikari that were all used to but it is still Shinji. Asuka on the other hand is just murder to get right, getting her in character is like walking on a tightrope, you make her too much of a bitch and she becomes OC, you make her too mellow and she becomes OC… GAH! As for Tenshi, look, I don't see what your problem is, I SAID HE WAS MARY SUE! I warned you right from the start that this guy was a flaming MS! It's not my fault! That's just how he turned out, over a period of time I'm going to try and tone him down, or deliver him a healthy dose of EVA brand superangst ™, or both. 

Again with the rambling and the time wasting… Oh well enjoy as best you can.

**NGE-Gospel of the Serpent**

By Flash69

Chapter 2

"Kether, who died and was reborn, a vengeful ghost, who wept his secrets."

Tenshi Yamamoto _The_ Inverse Testament, _S3phiroth 2:2_

The space shuttle was packed with scientists. Tenshi couldn't swing without hitting a scientific calculator. This particular shuttle had been designed to ferry people to and from a space station. This told Tenshi a couple of things about what he what was going on, firstly was the apparent conclusion that he would be working for a period of time on a space station. Secondly it told him that this would be a research facility of some kind, possibly weapons developments. In any case most of his immediate questions would probably soon be answered and replaced by all new questions. Such, Tenshi felt, was the nature of the 'game'. His memory may be absent without leave, but his instincts were razor sharp.

They were all instructed to take their seats and strap themselves in, the passengers did so in good humour. After a few brief minutes, there came the roar of god behind them as the solid fuel thrusters ignited and propelled the small white metallic vessel in to the mid-afternoon sky.

The G force buffeted the passengers, some of the scientist threw up as a result, Tenshi merely grinned at their misfortune and endured.

When the thrusters finally died down and the scientists released their seatbelts and start playing in the anti-gravity like they were children discovering the wonder of balloons, Tenshi remained seated and looked through the window. It was because of this that it was Tenshi who saw it first. 

It began a patch of darkness in the stars, a shadow where a shadow should not be, then as the shuttle continued in its elliptical approach, the shadow began to take shape. It was huge, like a pair of black plates left on top of each other. A large rough spire shot out of the bottom, its unsmooth and unsymmetrical construction at odds with the clean lines of what lay above it.

He quickly gestured for the rest of the scientists to come look out of the side and they rushed over (well as much as one can do in zero gravity.) There was a chorus of "oohs" and "aahs" as they observed the celestial structure.

"I was expecting a space station…" Tenshi quietly mused.

"But I didn't expect it to be this big!"

When the shuttle finally docked with the gargantuan construct and the airlock was extended (it was around about this time that the gravity generated by the stations orbit kicked it, much to the amusement of Tenshi, but less so to the scientists.) they were greeted at the other End by Yaezaki. He wore much the same as when Tenshi had seen him less than three hours ago, save the inclusion of a dark brown jacket.

"Greetings, Salutations and welcome!" he proclaimed in his delicate tones.

"This my learned underlings, is the Space Fortress Gilgamesh!"

"He called Gilgamesh the fortress, but we turned into a cradle of the serpent."

Tenshi Yamamoto _The_ Inverse Testament, _G3n3sis 5:2_

After the introductions had been made, Yaezaki bade them farewell (exact words) and they dispersed in the general direction of the nearest bar. 

Alcohol had a negative effect on Tenshi, spirits gave him a bad burn, but beer and wines weren't so bad. It also took him a while to get properly, or even comfortably drunk. This was one of the reasons that Tenshi rarely got drunk, the other was that he didn't like to lose control.

But the days events have left him with an unsettled feeling in his gut that he needed alcohol to remove.

He took a long draught of the beer he was drinking, it burned on the way down and settled in his gut, feeling like mild napalm.

There was another side affect to Tenshi drinking; he mumbled, about the past. Tenshi mumbled about the past he couldn't remember. This was why he always kept a Dictaphone on him whenever he went drinking (at the very least it made interesting listening in the morning.) Unfortunately, while he mumbled about the past, he also mumbled about a lot of other things as well, put simply, when he got drunk, he talked an awful lot. Very little of what he said however, was even remotely relevant.

"…burns, body can't stand the 'al-ki-hol', breaks the polywhotsits, polyesters, polyhedrons, wozzit… thingy? Breaks 'em down, dissolves 'em a little. But I'm bullet proof! Titanium devil I am. I miss my friends…"

This would go on for at least another few hours, as he steadily drunk more and more until he had enough. Unlike most people, Tenshi Yamamoto, knew when he he'd had enough. No matter how drunk, he knew; when he'd had enough.

At the moment however, he hadn't had enough.

"I remember what happened at the end… Red seas as far as you can see, see? Red Seas! Sea! See? No? Perfect world my arse! Nuffink' wrong with this place, just a couple of problems with the gaffer. You know, the Gaffer. You know? The well full o' shiny things. Crabs and what-not. What? Not. What? Not. That and the other thingy, infinite revolution or summink. I remember the purple one… The purple one! The purple one! Why'd you take the purple one! We called her Yui, but she's called Ritsuko now, always recycle ya' hear!"

In all honesty, listening to Tenshi's drunken ramblings should only be done in short bursts.

"Not supposed be here… Got lost running from Lu-see-faaah, nothing left but some crap on a quarter in my pants… Join the army! Be a man! Forgot to mention about devils didn't we! Buggerit… Millennium hand and shrimp! There! I said it! So Fnaar! 

Fnaar! Fnaar! Fnaar! Weeble, weeble, schlup" *whumpf* 

Tenshi fell off the bar stool. There was a brief five second pause. A hand shot up over the flat horizon of the bar and propelled the worse for wear JDF Captain upwards.

"I'M O-KAY!"

In a darkened room, illuminated by security monitors only, Commander Yaezaki watched with a mild frown.

"I wonder just how much of this is relevant and how much is meaningless…"

Tenshi finished off another beer, the burning was getting worse and he was nearly done. He leaned backwards and saluted a random direction with his middle finger. "Idiot! Don't'cha know?" He then fell of his bar stool again.

That was the point that a mysterious power surge caused one single particular monitor to fizz and crackle before smoke and flame billowed forth. Right in front of Yaezaki. The Commander gently moved his chair out of the way and picked up a fire extinguisher. As he doused the meagre flames before they became a hazard and started biting into the oxygen supply, he quietly mused… 

"Now how on earth did that just happen?"

"The eyes of the unalive cannot catch me unawares…"

Tenshi Yamamoto _The_ Inverse Testament,_ G3n3sis 2:4_

If you ask anyone working in PIRO, even (in fact especially) the ones who used to work for NERV, they will tell you there is no such thing as 'Section R'.

They will tell you that there is no such thing as the JDF Reality Warping Warfare Division and that it certainly doesn't exist as a secret thirty level basement where Terminal Dogma once stood. Absolutely not, no way Jose.

But then again, people said the same things about Terminal Dogma, and a certain crucified angel didn't they? And once again, an Ikari was right in the middle of it.

The lift had been secretly fitted and disguised in his office. The small lift would cramp more than two people, or one big man, but it was sufficient to get him to where Shinji needed to be.

He finally reached floor B23 and the doors slid open with precise whoosh. He was greeted by his assistant Dr Kazuya Nobuichi,  man of 29 with brown hair and an open mind with a flair for quantum physics.

Shinji rubbed the back of his head and grinned.

"I feel like batman or something whenever I do this." He said to Kazuya.

"What does that make me? Robin?" asked Kazuya as he handed Shinji a lab coat.

" I dunno, what did you need me for?"

"Well two things mainly, were getting readings we don't understand from the Sephiroth Device, we'd like you to take a look at it. Secondly, could you tell Kensuke to stop playing about with the Linear Macro gun?"

"Well he's never stopped when I've told him befo… Wait a second! The linear macro gun!? But that's the gun for…"

"Coring planets, yes. You can see why we're worried."

Shinji sweatdropped and noticeably quickened his pace.

After a short discourse to Kensuke about why planet buster weapons should not be tinkered around with, no, not even if they are cool. The two began a less urgent pace to the central hanger, where Lilith once hung.

"You realize of course, that the only reason we even keep him around is at your insistence. I mean sure, when it comes to computers the guy's one of the best I've seen, but he still way too much trouble for his own good."

"I know, I'm sorry, but he wouldn't do things like that if you gave him enough to do."

"Are you saying it's my fault now?"

"Why do people think that blame always lies solely on a single person? Just give him something complicated and challenging to do and he'll be busy all night. Trust me I understand him."

"We should ditch him."

"No, Toji plays soccer for living, Kensuke works for the military that was the deal."

"Pardon?"

"No."

"He'll get us all killed Shinji."

Shinji sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Stop pushing this alright? I said no!"

There was an uncomfortable silence as they made their way to Sephiroth.

The Laboratory was huge, capable of storing four EVA's side by side and in it's centre was the device. The Sephiroth device was the jewel in the crown of Section R's achievements. Designed on the materials gathered in the last few seconds before Third Impact and with Shinji's understanding of how the universe worked, they had managed to create an artificial third impact field machine. Designed to recreate reality, it was a machine that could create and change anything with impunity, ignoring all the laws of science. It wasn't yet finished, they still were months, maybe even years from a successful test.

It hung in the middle of the chamber, a single golden eye, besieged by scaffolding and wires. 

"What kind of signals were you getting?"

They promptly showed him the readout, the device had been receiving strange electrical signals. Shinji could feel that part of his brain that was all understanding, that was powered by force of all creation, the same source that the Sephiroth Device sought to harness, start to flare into action.

He grasped at the formerly meaningless statistics and readings as they began to form together, to make sense and cohesion.

The others in Section R knew about this ability of Shinji's, they had no idea as to the causes of it, but they all knew the signs of their Section Commander slowly unravelling the mysteries of reality.

Shinji hated it when he gathered a crowd, they always made him nervy, he felt like he was performing, like some kind of dancing bear on a leash.

Still, to be fair it wasn't really _him that the crowd were waiting on, it was that part of his brain that could strip away the layers of deception, recover information from the elliptical and decipher the workings of the universe._

He blinked.

"It's code…" he finally commented.

"Of what?"

"The…universe…"

There was a collective pause until finally, inevitably came the expletive.

"Holy fuck!"

The irony was not lost on Shinji. The laugh started as in his gut, as an imperceptible movement of the shoulders, then as a quiet snicker that began to get louder and higher in pitch until he was laughing out loud. It took him thirty seconds to begin to wind down, he would have taken longer but he then noticed that the scientists were looking at him funny. 

"Sorry… I.. Erm.. well…" he tried, but the words wouldn't come and he eventually hung his head downwards and to the right.

"Sorry."

The rest of the day in Section R felt awkward to Shinji and he was glad when he was finally able to take the lift and depart.

"I view that man as my brother and love him dearly"

Tenshi Yamamoto, The _Inverse Testament S3phiroth 1:4_

Havana really hadn't changed all that much. The country was underdeveloped and the cities were at least twenty years behind the time. But the beaches were golden and clear and they made damn fine cigars. This was two out three reasons why the man liked it, and two out of three reasons why the woman didn't. The man had long unkempt brown hair, and a poorly maintained beard, his overly bright Hawaiian shirt was garish and a tasteless contrast to the woman's sleek, orderly apparel. Who was clothed in a pale blue summer dress, curved sunglasses and pale straw sun hat, her short brown hair streaked with grey. 

"Ugh, why is it my hair starts to go grey before yours?" she casually asked the man. He shrugged before replying equally casually.

"Well that's what Peroxide will do to your hair."

"Well, grey hairs can be concealed, but nothing can conceal your poor taste in clothes…"

"Hey! I like this shirt!"

To a casual observer one could be forgiven for thinking them a couple on holiday. A less casual observer would notice little contradictions, like the work papers that scattered their table or the non-alcoholic nature of the beverages present. 

"What was so important that you had to wake me up at nine this morning anyway?" The woman asked.

The man told her.

"Oh come on!" she reacted incredulously, probably rolling her eyes underneath her sunglasses. "Don't you think if there was a space station of that size up their that someone would have noticed it by now?"

Papers were shuffled in the woman's general direction and she peered at them while the man continued.

"It's all there, the shuttle goes up once a week full of personnel and comes back with just the crew. If they haven't got a space station up there then were looking and most complex mass murder in history."

"Hmmm…"

"It gets better, look a the manifest for the last shuttle. Seat 9A."

The woman rifled through the papers again as she found the article, she scanned the list until she came to a name, she then gasped.

"Is it him?"

"If it is, I think we'd better find out."

"Right. I'll get the wise men working on it when I get back."

There was a pause as the two proceeded to sip their respective drinks. 

"Well, after eight years of waiting, it's here at last." Said the man as he continued to nurse his Cola.

"What is?" queried his companion.

"The end of the story."

It was dark when Shinji got back to the apartment, the lights from the windows of his third story abode shining like a beacon to his weary self. When he got in Asuka was in middle of ordering a takeaway and Rei was nowhere to be found. 

"I'll have a pizza." He called to Asuka. "Baka! Were having Chinese!" came the reply.

"Oh, umm… well I'll just have a curry then."

"What kind curry."

"I don't know, chicken?"

"Boooring!"

"Beef then!"

"Make up your mind Dumkopf!"

"I said Beef! With egg fried rice! And a spring roll!"

Asuka smirked at him, which made him think he'd just acted exactly as she'd predicted. 

After she finished making the order she sat down next to him on the couch still smirking. Shinji sat back on the couch and tried to close his eyes to catch some rest, Asuka however had other plans.

"You are so predictable Shinji at times Shinji."

That was when Shinji pounced on her. In one swift movement he had her arms pinned to the cushions of the couch and for a brief moment they were both still, with Shinji on top of her, she feel his warm breath on her face, she blushed madly and her heart pumped furiously. Then reality re-asserted itself and she burst out laughing. The moment having irrevocably passed, Shinji got up slightly embarrassed.

Time passed.

Food arrived and was eaten.

"So where _is_ Rei anyway?" Shinji asked as he finished off his rice.

"Oh she's in her room." Asuka said in a non-committal way.

"What!? Why didn't you get her any food!?"

"She said she wasn't hungry!" Asuka shot back.

He could see Asuka looking angrily at him and he shrank back, he could ask Rei if she'd had anything to eat later. Now was definitely not the time. 

There was an uncomfortable silence for a few seconds before Shinji bravely tried to change conversation.

"So… How was work today?" it was about as unoriginal as "nice weather were getting" but it did the trick as Asuka launched herself in a diatribe about the kind of idiots she had to talk to as part of the Support line. 

In her room Rei listened to Asuka rant about random idiots, she remembered how she had exploded on the phones earlier in the day. Apparently someone had been misinformed about the re-imbursement policies that PIRO offered, Asuka's responses had been, humorous. Yes, humorous was probably the correct term, although frightening was a close second. As she continued to talk in heated tones, Rei sat down and continued her drawing, she liked drawing, her medium was usually charcoal, but she was also a dab hand with inks as well. This particular drawing was one of faceless man, his black cloak billowing behind him, in the background was an image of purgatory and his face was a featureless blank save for a single eye in the middle.

"Binah was my mirror and as I did not know myself, I did not know her until I was whole."

Tenshi Yamamoto, The _Inverse Testament S3phiroth 10:1    _

End of Part 02

Wooo. Now, how easy to spot was the part that was done whilst drunk? Yes, that easy. 

Anyways, a big thanks to everyone who reviewed, I now have more reviews for this story than I have for all the other fics I have on FF.net combined! (All two of them.) Anyways, I hope this continues to deliver on the standards of the first chapter (or even heaven help us, improve somewhat.) Again, I'm pretty sure I told you what the pairings were at the beginning so I don't see why certain people are moaning about it now. I've tried to tone down the INCREDIBLE POWURZ thing that Shinji's got going, and I really should stress, that most of those powers really were a one time thing. It's unlikely he's going to use them again (barring the end of the world.) I've also tried to bring out the angsty dorkiness of Shinji more. Personally I'm more worried about whether I got Asuka right, as I mentioned before, getting her right is _hard! Oh, word of warning, there will be giant robots in this, I'm probably making a big mistake here, as I can't do action scenes to save my life, but hey, I can try. Well anyways, you guys keep on reviewing, and I'll keep on writing. Adios!_


	3. Chapter 3

Ooog… After re-reading chapter 2, I realise that, yes… I need proofreaders… ugh. This chapters been through development hell, firstly my computer crashed so I lost what little work I had after February, then all that remained was me to pick at it until it got finished. 

As per request I've done my damnedest to try and tone down Tenshi's X-TREME MARY SUE-NEES, although I'm really going to have to crank up the main plot a notch, and start introducing subplots before I put all seven of you to sleep.

Disclaimer: I don't own NGE, and if I did, I wouldn't have used quite so many Jewish references, It would've ended up with a lot more Chinese and Japanese reference, and the mecha would have been smaller and easier to produce, and there would have been kabuki dances and the main character would be an adult with a whiny sister who… oh damn, that's Gasakari isn't it….

Damn…

Proper Disclaimer: I don't own NGE, I don't own its character, but I do own Tenshi, much as it appals me. 

NGE – Gospel of the Serpent

By Flash69

Chapter 03

The room was dark, a warm amber light shone through the closed slits that concealed the room to the world. There was smoke in the air and the only sounds were that of rapid typing, and the gentle yet ominous hum of gigantic supercomputers that made the two person room barely big enough for one. The monolithic computers were powered with equipment and power lines gained through an 'agreement' with the local authorities. 

"The end indeed… While he gets to be cryptic and enigmatic, I have to try and hack into top level security systems looking for a name. I'd like to see him sidestep Magi and Pleiades computers…" 

She continued to mutter as she worked, chipping away at the security levels, bypassing proxy monitors, disabling firewalls and generally being the super hacker she had styled herself as for the last eight years. Since the Third Impact the woman's online avatar had been known as KuroNeko666, a hacker, known the world over, responsible for numerous deep governmental penetrations, many of which had been thought impossible before. The handle was known to Computer Law Enforcers around the world and was known to be responsible for 156 high profile hacks, and those were just the ones they knew about. Her hands flew over the keyboard less like a computer operator and more like a passionate composer, the harsh staccato of her typing almost had a hard to discern rhythm to it, making her seem like the white haired pianists of olden times, like Mozart or Beethoven. 

In another time zone, Kensuke Aida sat at his computer terminal, with the power of the Section R's Pleiades Supercomputer System behind him. The seven monolithic engines hummed quietly. He was whiling the late hours away, indulging in his first and only real hobby, by hacking into the EDF mainframe. It was between the bypassing of proxy servers and firewalls just for the sheer hell of it that he noticed he wasn't alone on the system. 

Once she breached the outer defences the woman took a quick scan of the mainframe. The personnel files she was looking for were heavily encrypted and armoured with several layers of firewalls and proxy servers. She also noted that there was someone else already on the system. A further system check revealed that he had already disabled some of the firewalls for her. She raised one of her eyebrows "Well, never let it be said that I look a gift horse in the mouth…" she said as she resumed typing.

Whoever this mystery hacker was, he was _good_. He'd already taken down the other three firewalls that covered the personnel files (which he had always thought were a little overly protected, it was easier to hack into the weapons research program than it was to get at those files.) he took out four of the proxy monitors and even disabled an automatic alarm that Kensuke didn't even know he'd tripped. Kensuke was suitably awed; he began to wonder if he should be taking notes. Instead he started the most discreet user tracker program he had, a home-grown program he liked to call the Kensuke Special Mk IV (never mind that there wasn't a mark 1 to 3) shunted a lot of the processing power of the Pleiades System into it, and shot it on it's way down this mystery hackers pipeline. In less than a second it quietly tore through 3000 separate sites neatly spaced all over the world. Kensuke whistled, this guy was good.

She barely had time to react before she realized that a trace signal had been latched onto her, she didn't recognize the program but assumed that it was new tracker program for the JDF. She promptly hit the subroutine that sent it on a wild goose chase around America continuously before redirecting herself back to the task at hand. The last of the defences on the site fell and she quickly began to download the data onto the Fourteen Terabyte hard drive she'd made especially. The data flowed like a waterfall onto the system.

Kensuke swore as he saw what he did to the Kensuke Special. He disabled the program and saw that he was downloading the entire file system, seeing no reason not to do like wise, he helped himself. 

With the data silently downloaded, she restored the security systems as she left the system and shut off her connection. The extra hacker had been unexpected, but not too troublesome, and in any case, she had bigger things to do. She opened up the data file and began to sort through it looking for the data she wanted.

" An expansion of the earlier MAGI system used before the Third Impact, the Pleiades system works in roughly the same manner, but instead of linking three, it cross links seven supercomputers. The increase in power and speed makes it far superior to the Magi system pioneered by Dr Akagi..."

- Pleiades System presentation to JDF representatives, by Kensuke Aida. 

When I finally awoke, it was probably morning, in the inky blackness of space it was hard to tell. I had a mild headache and felt overly warm, like I had been sunbathing for too long, not quite sunburned, but still a little frazzled. I looked down and realized that I'd gone to sleep at my desk; bad posture was quickly becoming a sleeping habit it seemed. My computer was still on, this was strange as I didn't remember turning it on, but then again, I didn't remember much of last night at all. It was a small mercy that I'd managed to get home at all. I was going to turn it off when a passage of what I wrote caught my eye.

"In Gaf I wandered to long, and retained only my body and soul" my eyes widened and my pulse quickened, what was this? What was this I had written? I sat back down and began to read. 

The passages were elliptical, alluded to things but failed to properly describe.  Of Kethers and Yesods, of Tiphareths and Hods; of the halls of the dead and the place of the living. The more I read the more certain I became, these were my lost memories. Of course it would have been much easier if my brain had not decided to have a pique of Judaism whilst writing them. But of this was the beginning at last to the long road of recovery.

The space fortress Gilgamesh is huge, easily the size of Tokyo IV, yet it always felt cramped upon itself, as if it were trying to cram too much into too small a space. Getting to where he was supposed to be on time had proved difficult. The transport trains and lifts snaked around and in on themselves like a maze and Tenshi was sure that it was designed that way for the sole purpose of making novices late. 

He arrived ten minutes late, what was worse; Commander Yaezaki had _waited_ for him. So he'd had to make his excuses to an annoyed crowd of people before Yaezaki waved it off and led them deeper into the research compound. Which only served to make the crowd even more annoyed at him, and the last thing he wanted was to alienate the people he was supposed to be working with.

"This facility was constructed five years ago mostly by the funding of the JDF and other concerned parties…"

SEELE, the words jumped into his forebrain instantly, along with some select imagery and a bad taste in his mouth. No proto-Judaic references, no scriptures, just words, images and sensations, he almost faltered at the rush of memories but he quickly hid and tried to concentrate on what Yaezaki was saying.

"Originally the fortress was designed as a weapons testing ground for equipment a little to controversial for home testing, but over the years we've managed to take our personal research to higher priority than those other projects."

"Which is?" a man from the back asked.

Yaezaki turned his head to cast a lopsided glance at the group he was leading, accompanied by a similarly lopsided grin. Tenshi began to get a sick feeling in his stomach that he wasn't going to like this. 

"It began almost four years ago, when we found drifting into space, something…remarkable." His voice had a quiet tone, almost filled with wonder and joy.

This really began to worry Tenshi, and a sinking sensation formed in the bottom of his gut.

There was a snap hiss as thick double doors with blunt serrated teeth separated sideways from each other, to reveal a hanger, large and gunmetal grey. Filled with technicians and scientists, and, in the middle, stood a Golem.

"My God." Was all Tenshi said, without a trace of irony or emotion.

EVA Unit 01 (Experiment type)

"As you can see…" Yaezaki said with gentle mirth "…rumours of the Evangelions death have been greatly exaggerated…"

""In the end, humanity's worst enemy is humanity itself."

- Gendo Ikari

Shinji found himself wide awake and sweating, as if he'd had a bad dream, his hands were shaking and it took him a few moments to realize that he had been crying. The tears had streaked paths across his face and he realized that it was wet. He was shivering and he wrapped his covers around himself and curled into a ball, horribly afraid of something he couldn't identify. Asuka didn't notice, a couple of sleeping pills and a glass of water to keep her own nightmares at bay had seen to that. There was an ugly taste in the back of Shinji's mouth and before he knew it he was rushing to the bathroom.

The surge of vomit hit him and he emptied his dinner into the porcelain basin of the toilet. 

He wanted to put this whole experience off as a bad Chinese, but he owed his instincts too much to disregard them like that, in truth he didn't really have much of a choice. Something bad was going to happen soon. Once again it all boiled down to the illusion of choice, for a brief moments that stretched to eternity eight years ago, he'd known everything, it was like all of the earth and all it ever was, was a part of him, filling him with luminescence. He'd known everything, felt everything, gods how he'd felt everything! Then, just like that,  he'd made two simple changes in the fabric of reality no more complex than a surgeon making a routine appendix operation  and he'd just given the majority of his powers away, just like that. At least he thought he did.

He made a ragged gasp as he sank down further as he remembered what his nightmare was about, what if he hadn't given away his powers, what if he was still in heaven or wherever god lives creating and dictating the lives of this human he had made in his perfect image. He'd felt hollow and empty, like an spent shell, and he dimly wondered if this is what a dummy plug felt like. He was an image, not a real person, a simulacrum a fake, he wasn't even Shinji Ikari, just a lump of meat in its place. 

The sorrow and angst clawed at him from the ground up and tried to drag him down into nothingness, offered him the bliss of ignorance and oblivion, it would be so easy it whispered to take one too many sleeping pills and never wake up. All too easy…

Shinji made to stand and walk into the bedroom and end his life, too cowardly to risk the pain of hanging or slit wrists. Then he saw his face in the mirror, that was when the usually carefully sealed divine powers of understanding began to flare, not a lot, just enough to make him hold a little. He stood at indecision, between dark comfort and the harsh path, and from his lips sprung words he had not said in a long time…

"I must not run away…" 

This time however it was different, he didn't say the words as a scared unsure boy, he said them with conviction, that no matter what else was true or false in this world, this was his principle. He said it firmly and with conviction, and as he did so he felt the seal of divine understanding open fully, and the tide of information and energy flushed through him and he felt his soul, his soul, and he knew for certain as the nightmare dissipated fully, that he _was _Shinji Ikari and he will not run away. Ever. Again. 

Asuka had woken up shortly after he had gone to the bathroom, this was annoying as she had taken enough sleeping pills to keep her asleep for days, lord knows she'd had to wrangle enough with her doctor to get a prescription. The psychiatrist had wanted to get them both into a small room and talk for god sake, as if talking to Shinji ever made a difference! She thought of Shinji and groggily rose her head, she felt that something was wrong, it was like a cold shaft of ice had replaced her spine and the hairs on the back of her neck had suddenly sprung upwards. It wasn't a sensation that had anything to do with the first five senses, but nevertheless it screamed that she had to get in that bathroom, _right now._ She rose unsteadily from the bed, her light blue nightshirt covering her as she made a slightly erratic path towards the door. Inside she head something being whispered and then a wash of relief seemed to wash over her, like a bubble bursting drawing the air in around the empty vacuum in its wake. As a result she stumbled forward and clumsily grasped the handle, turned and tried to see the light through her still drugged hazy vision. She began to sink to the floor just as Shinji noticed her. She wasn't even conscious when he caught her before she hit the tiled floor.

Shinji still felt a little weak from throwing up and with the excess weight he staggered and his legs buckled and the two of them ended up on the floor. He couldn't understand why or even how she'd gotten up like that, she'd taken enough pills to put a horse to sleep. But then, again, she probably would have intercepted him on the way to her tablet. He sighed.

"You were just trying to stop me from doing something stupid again weren't you, Asuka?"

He hugged the redhead from behind and thought back to four years ago.

-A3I 04- [A/N: Woohoo! Flashback!]

He understood everything, except Asuka, he understood Trans-dimensional physics, but he didn't understand Asuka. The one thing he did understand about Asuka was how she made him feel. The way that her hair seemed to flow gracefully as she moved, the sparkle of her eyes, the way she made everything seem so much fuller of life than it had been, hell, even things so primary as colours seemed to glow with an inner glory whenever she was around. He loved Asuka, and it really scared him. Mostly because he didn't think she loved him, she seemed to think of him as more of a brother, a pest tied to her by bonds of family, not forged by blood but family all the same. He was terrified of rejection, of the mocking, of constantly having to see her afterwards. He'd tried saying out loud once, just to himself in front of a mirror, he'd been utterly terrified and he'd stuttered out a quick "I love Asuka" before running away, from his reflection.

'Heh, no wonder Asuka says I'm pathetic…' he thought.

It was a Sunday and he was in his apartment watching her now, quietly delighting in how she made the place seem to come alive. Man, he had it bad. 

He felt trapped and uncomfortable, he just wanted to reach out and touch her, to kiss her and stroke **whoa whoa whoa!** Shinji shook the hentai thoughts from his heads for what seemed like the hundredth time today. Unfortunately Asuka noticed, and growled in frustration. 

"Dammit Ikari! What the hell is wrong with you, that gotta be the hundredth time to day you've shook your head like that looking like it's the end of the world…again."

Briefly, the thought of just how incredibly attractive she sounded when she growled like that flashed through his mind before being quashed by the rest of his brain as it furiously tried to come a quick and satisfying answer for a red haired goddess that demanded an immediate answer . His brain jumped at the first thing that came to mind.

"It's Kensuke!"

"Why!? What has that stooge done now!"

"Nothing! He's just having some problems!"

"Such as!?"

Her tone was rapid and insisted it was heated and her face close, dangerously close. Without having time to think his brain leapt to the first thing that came to his mind.

"Girl problems!"

"That idiot!? With a woman!?" she seemed almost visibly disgusted with the concept.

"No! That's the problem! You see…"

He should have stopped there, he should have found a way to diffuse the situation and make up a believable excuse, should have but didn't.

"There's this girl he likes, I mean really likes, his little eyes just light up whenever she's in the room. But the really strange thing is that she kind of tolerates him as well. Well I say tolerates, she kind of treats him like an annoying little brother, but he really wants to confess to her but he finds it really hard, and he really scared he'll ruin what he already has and he's my friend so I don't want him to be unhappy…"

She rolled her eyes, which certain parts of Shinji's brain found adorable, while the rest just yelled at him to shut up.

"So you're saying that that stupid Stooge is so scared of ruining what he's got that he's going to end up more depressed than before he even met her!"

"No way! He's way more happier than when he was alone!"

"Bah! That Dumpkopf should just tell her, maybe he'll get lucky."

Shinji was a little emotionally charged at this point, he realised he was talking about himself (I've got this friend who likes this girl… that's gotta be the most unoriginal line in the book) but nevertheless he felt the need to defend himself through Kensuke.

"So your saying he should just blurt it out!? In the off chance that she doesn't think of him as an annoying kid brother? Despite all the evidence to the contrary!? The way she teases him, the way she hits him when she thinks she's out of line? The way she messes with his shower by turning on all the cold water taps in the apartment! The way she sets him up on dates!? Would she set him up on dates if she was remotely interested in him Asuka!? Would She!?" He didn't realise how pent up he was getting about this, how much pressure had been built up over the years.

"She would! If she thought…" she trailed off to mumblings and she looked to the floor.

Large parts of his brains screamed at him to shut up and finish the conversation, unfortunately these parts hadn't been in control since the conversation started. 

"If she thought what?" He calmly asked, his curiosity piqued.

Asuka continued her head still facing the apartment floor.

"If she thought that he felt that she was just his big sister." Came the quiet reply.

Oh. My. God.

Dear lord who art in heaven, please tell me that were both talking about ourselves in an elliptical manner.

Shinji didn't pray often, but he when he did, he did so with zeal.

"Ah…" he said at a loss for words.

Asuka seemed to use this moment to recover slightly.

"Of course the very idea of that Stooge getting his hands on a women is a rather disturbing image."

"I don't suppose you'd know how he'd find something like that out would you? Other than asking I mean."

"No! I don't! And what girl are you talking about anyway?"

"Oh, you wouldn't have met Kensukes girl, she works outside of your division."

This was true, Asuka probably didn't know who Kensukes girl was, in fact, Shinji didn't know who Kensukes girlfriend was.

"Well, if that's what's bothering you, then I suggest you stop letting it bug you, it's nothing to do with you."

The conversation was beginning to disperse and a part of him was happy and a part of him was sad. He felt that he had been very close to something important and had let it slip through his fingers.

"So you think he should just out and out tell her?"

"Sure! I mean, if she really views him as her little brother she'll just bash him on the noggin, tell him how she feels and go help him a find someone else. I mean that's what I'd do with you."

With those words his heart seemed to become heavy and leaden and began to sink into the pit of his stomach and beyond. 

"Yeah, I figured." Was all he said.

"Cos' I know you think of me as your big sister Shinji!" she seemed almost pleased with herself at the declaration.

"No I don't."

To this day he never really understood why he ever said that out loud. In fact it wasn't until he saw just the smallest hint of hurt in Asuka's eyes did he even realize he'd spoken.

"Yes, you do, you, you just don't realize it…" he voice almost seemed unsure, this was deeply abnormal for Asuka.

"No, I've got a sister, I know what that feels like."

"…I know what that feels like." The words hit her like a freight train. She'd tried so hard to finally fit in, to stop being so isolated, to finally have a family. She knew she'd done to much to Shinji for him to ever think of her in the way she thought of him, so she'd tried so hard to find his love another way. To become a sister to him, to lend him a helping hand when he was down, to kick his ass when it needed kicking, and grow old together. But now she realised he couldn't even view her as that, as the position was already filled, no vacancies at the inn. One applicant chosen, first come first serve to be Shinji Ikari's brother, and Rei Ayanami Ikari had beaten her to it. She'd never hated Ayanami, maybe was annoyed by or felt jealous to, but she never hated until now.

She didn't now how it had begun, perhaps it was just the little things, the helping her through her non-existence nightmares, the tucking her in at night. Maybe so simple a thing as seeing him smile in the mornings while he cooked them breakfast. Then one day she'd woken up, brushed her teeth, combed her hair, and realized that she was in love with Shinji Ikari. 

She'd dropped her brush for a start.

"Then I'm just… Then it was…"

She fumbled for words, it was like her chest had been physically pierced and rendered asunder, tearing her apart piece by piece. It was like she was back in EVA-02 again and the production types were killing her all over again. She could feel her heart beat against her chest, and it hurt.

She calmly walked away from him even though inside she felt as if she'd just been hollowed out with an ice cream scooper. Then she said

"Well, since I'm apparently little more than a drain on your hospitality, I think I'd better leave."

She meant it, Shinji knew by now when Asuka was bluffing and when she wasn't.

Every part of Shinji's brain screamed "idiot!" at him and unlike before he listened. 

"You don't have too! Really! It's okay!" 

Purely by instinct he resorted to the old standby he hadn't used in a while and would instantly regret.

"…I'm Sorry!"

Asuka spun round with pure fury in her eyes, her eyes shimmered and she wondered if she was as close to tears as he was. 

"Sorry! I thought I told you that I never wanted to hear you say that to me again! I hate it when you say that! You spineless wimp!"

The old Shinji would have backed away, turned his head to the ground and stayed silent, but the new Shinji didn't.

"Dammit Asuka! I love you!"

The words 'Oh Shit' flashed through his mind before his chest erupted in a Technicolor smorgasbord of varying emotions and a warmness spread throughout his entire body.

The emotional rollercoaster that she was on hit her for a loop and as the force of Shinji's confession slammed into her like tsunami. It was like she had dived on her front into a pool and it had smashed into her before leaving her weightless. He legs felt weak, she seemed to tip forwards and she grabbed Shinji with her hands and hugged him hoping to never let go, and she finally burst into tears. So did Shinji and they both sank to the floor exhausted by their emotional exchange. Asuka felt something, in the bottom of her soul, something she'd not felt in along time. Hope, and it was a warm feeling that she welcomed.

She woke up a few minutes later on the couch leaning next to him. She looked up at his face without him realizing, he looked guilty, like he was a little schoolboy waiting for his punishment. Dear lord he was cute when he did that, kinda sad though to see him so depressed. He must have seen that she was awake and suddenly found something very interesting in the floor as he spoke. 

"I'm not saying it, but you know I want to right?" he said. 

Apologize!? He wanted to Apologize!? That stupid little asshole! You don't just tantalize someone with something like that and then pull it away the next minute! 

"I shouldn't have just blurted it out like… Well maybe not quite like… Ugh, I just don't know what to say here." 

"Just don't tell me you wont take it back." She didn't even know if she'd said that out loud or not, her heart felt as if it was about to be crushed again.

He looked at her, and realized that she was just as terrified as he was, he could see it in her eyes. 

"Please Asuka, just tell me how you really feel." Was all he said, he wanted this to end, the glances , the hoping, the misinterpretations, the jumped to conclusions, he just wanted to finally know how she really felt about him, because she finally knew how he felt about her. 

So she did.

This was the only chance she was going to have, she knew this, and she wasn't going to back down from a challenge so important. She went to speak, but her mouth was empty, she couldn't find anything to say, it was as if her voice had jammed, this was the only chance that she was going to get and she couldn't say a word! She opened her mouth again but still nothing would come out.

Shinji looked even sadder than he was before and began to turn his head away, she was losing him!

She was not going to lose this chance! If she couldn't say how she felt then she was going to have to show him! She only thought he didn't think badly of her because of it, because she was Asuka Sohryu Langley, and she didn't throw herself at just anyone!

As a result, she practically glomped him before mashing her lips onto his, the kiss was fierce and desperate, the last gamble of a person close to losing everything in her life that had meaning. To say the least Shinji was pleasantly surprised, which was probably why he fell of the end of the couch. 

A moment of silence passed as Asuka looked at the spectacle before and her face bloomed into a grin, and then Asuka just burst out laughing and as her face, which was as red as her hair, with her puffy eyes from crying earlier, seemed to burst into life, like the birth of a sun, Shinji just watched in awe at her beauty. He then cupped her cheek in the palm of his hands brought their faces close and showed her how he felt himself.

- End of Flashback [A/N: Woohoo! …Erk…Ahem]

He remembered quite clearly that he'd been smiling like an idiot for the entirety of the next week, but he didn't care, he was in love, and she loved him back, and all was right in the world.

As he dragged her surprisingly heavy (not that he would ever tell her this, after eight years his survival instincts were pretty well honed) form back to bed and gently placed her back in bed, he tenderly stroked her hair and quietly said into her ear. "Don't worry, I'm still smiling Asuka, don't ever worry about that."

She mumbled something he couldn't quite hear and seemed to settle back into a regular sleep. Shinji hugged her again and drew her close as sleep took him as well.

End of Chap 3

I honestly thought that this fic was never going to get finished, I'd gotten to the part where Shinji woke up and there was this big blank spot where all my ideas used to live. It was really freaky. So I left it for a couple of weeks, let university, deadlines, parents and a really nasty cold take priority. Then one day, I decided to start up on it again, I figured I'd write for about half an hour and then go to bed so I could make my 9:00 the next morning. 

I didn't stop typing until 2:40 in the freaking morning.

I feel so proud.

Anyways, in one really mad dash of typing I made about three thousand words, and pretty much finished the fic in one night. Incidentally, does anyone think that I got Asuka out of character? Or Shinji for that matter, I have to admit it's been a while since I watched any EVA (especially since it was Death and Rebirth that kicked me off with the first chapter in the beginning) and getting research material isn't easy with a cheap University 56K connection. Of course there are several really huge plot points that I'm not looking forward to having to explain. 

Oh, and by the way, what did you guys think of my WaFF? Too much? Not enough? How could I have improved it?

(Enough comments and I may just take your suggestions and revise the scene, depending on how good the ideas are.)

Please review, I need them.


	4. Chapter 4

What chapter am I up to now? Four? Christ. If anyone's still reading this after the delayed uploading times, the massive and irregular schedule (good lord, the Ultimates have shorter breaks between issues for gods sakes…) then truly you are saintly people, with perhaps not enough to do. Unlike me, who has more than enough to do, but just can't really be bothered to do it. I was really happy with the way the last chapter turned out, but I doubt I can keep that standard up. For a start I'm going to start adding action sequences now groan, this isn't going to be good…

Hmmm.. Did anyone think that the last chapter was nothing but a load of filler? Was that just me? I personally feel I need to be more descriptive with my writing and spend more time on subjects before I move onto the next.

Disclaimer: If I owned Neon Genesis Evangelion it would be nearly as good as it actually is. But since it is, I clearly don't, QED. Tenshi Yamamoto however… yeah he's mine, sorry. Teufalmotors if I get round to them are mine as well.

NGE – Gospel of the Serpent

By Flash69

Space fortress Gilgamesh spun silently in the vacuum of space, it's huge frame hung above Japan like an invisible sword of Damocles. On the outside there was no light, all was darkness inky black and tinted glass. The inside however was bright and full of activity.

Inside bay thirteen, a swarm of engineers were working on an object that humanity thought it would never use again, Evangelion Unit 1.

It's purple form stood immobile in the middle, almost cocooned with scaffold and raised platforms, as white coated scientists swarmed over it like ants, prodding and poking it. It was like an upright carcass, empty and lifeless with scavengers picking it to pieces.

Commander Koworu Yaezaki leaned over the railing of a platform facing the purple behemoth and watched as the new scientists from the latest shuttle crowded around the golem, oohing and ahhing like five year olds. Just like all the rest, the first five seconds were always ones filled with wonder, the first five minutes were filled with anticipation, the first five hours were filled with excitement, the first five days were met with enthusiasm, the first five weeks were met with commitments and the first five months were met with boredom. It was true, familiarity did breed contempt.

Tenshi leaned on the railing beside him, his back to the purple beast, he sighed and looked up, his thoughts apparently on other things. His silence was strangely calming as white suits and engineers hustled and bustled around him, he was the eye of the storm, a centre of tranquillity, finite in nature and patient.

But like most things this was an illusion.

I found the presence of the EVA troubling, but somehow not terribly surprising, I was aware of my former position as the NERV/UN chief Liaison Officer but not through my own memories. It was a deeply unsettling feeling, being told you had done something and not having any recollection of it at all, it felt, hollow. Like I was  empty, and the emptiness filled me and typified my being, a great void of information that should have been present but was instead remiss. Sometimes that emptiness would shoot anxiety through my being and I would shake and weep for hours on end, adrift in my inner void. But for the moment I thought back to what I knew, and what my instincts told me.

I knew, no, I had been told, that the EVA's were Biomechanical constructs created over eight years ago as defensive measure against the Angels, that there were three of them, and at the advent of the Third Impact only the purple experimental type, Unit 01 remained operational, and then it disappeared. All other EVA's had been destroyed and without Angels there was no further need for EVA's and the Evangelion program was discarded.

My instincts told me to get the hell out of dodge and that I was in over my head, that this thing was dangerous and there was too much I didn't know or remember. But on the other hand, my instincts also told me that if I left now, I would never be able to get back here again, and if I'm not here, then there's no telling what the Commander would do with the EVA, I shuddered internally, for reasons I couldn't quite place.

"Does all this activity signify the resurrection of the EVA series?" I asked the commander, he didn't look at me and continued to look at a space in the distance, a random spot with little significance. But he did reply, in the same half-hearted tones he'd used since the beginning.

"There is some interest in that activity…"

There was something in the way he said those words that hinted at something else, that he had something more terrible in the wings of his mind, waiting and biding it's time.

"So commander, what interests you?"

The commander turned to look at him, ruby eyes tried to transfix him where he stood, but Tenshi ignored it as the Commander simply smiled and walked away. His steps making precise metallic rapports on the metal platform as he walked out view. Tenshi watched him go and as he disappeared from view Tenshi folded his arms and closed his eyes, his head bowed as he tried to grasp at the strands of memories in his head, but found them ephemeral.

The one constant sensation that danced between his eyes, a baseless instinct without memories was that this, was definitely not good. Not good at all.

He let out a low growl of frustration and resignation, he knew he should have told that over coated messenger where he could stuff his reactivation orders…

Kaneda Aketsu was a lowly wage slave working for the Post Impact Restoration Office, he lived a dreary life in the filing section, transferring pieces of paper from point A to B, and generally making the world a tidier place by making certain parts of it more cluttered than the rest. It was a dreary, excitement free existence, and Kaneda never wanted for more. He was content to live a quiet unassuming life working from nine till five in a quiet job away from the public (he couldn't stand false or scripted politeness) He was currently taking a relatively heavy, but not overly so, stack of papers and accounts two floors down to Insurance. He was however slightly pre-occupied and felt a little dizzy, an unfortunate side affect of the medication the doctor had prescribed for his epilepsy. For about two years he'd been having short three, two second black-outs at random intervals. This had of course prompted eighteen months of prodding, poking, prescriptions, prognoses and CAT scans. Kaneda was simply thankful his mother was living back in Hokkaido, the amount of coddling he'd have received didn't bear thinking about.

Sumire Nakajo on the other hand, was not a patient woman, and as a result she was rarely a polite one either. Born to a rich family, she worked as part of the telephone operators of the PIRO insurance division not through choice, but rather through a civil order as a result of crashing a rather expensive sports car into one of the many converted PIRO office buildings in the Geo-front. It was quite unfair she remarked, for a start the car had been more damaged than the building. The work was also quite demeaning, the constant politeness to idiots over a phone line who should know better. It simply infuriated her, and her infuriation made the remaining two months of her Community service go all the more slower. She was, she perhaps unconsciously realized, a selfish spoiled child, as perhaps was the fate of all overprotected and doted single children of well to parents, but she nevertheless treated her job and current existence with contempt and fire. Her annoyance was currently a simmering flame, as she walked up the steps to filing to retrieve the files she had requested some time ago but the idiots had failed to deliver. Her trace amount of patience had expired and she'd taken to the stairs to obtain the items she needed for herself.

It was at this critical moment as Kaneda and Sumire shared the same stairway that without warning, just like the every other time before it, Kaneda had an epileptic black-out.

His body folded over and he collapsed down the white marble stairs, his body pin wheeling like a marionette that had had it's strings cut. As he did so the papers he was carrying flew from his hand and into the air and floated like large white blossoms as their type faced format spun delicately to the ground.

As his body made suppressed thuds as it tumbled down the stairs, Sumire continued to walk upward not paying much attention to the person who was making more noise than usual as they descended, when however, a piece of printed A4 paper landed on her foot (the handout she'd asked for half an hour ago incidentally) she did stop to look at it, and wonder what it thought it was doing there.

It was only when Kaneda broke his arm with a loud reverberating CRACK in the silent stairway that she looked up and saw the falling office worker tumbling gently and yet inevitably towards her.

There was, it would occur to her later that night, something very disturbing at just how quiet the whole event was, if it weren't for the muffled thuds of Kaneda's body hitting the hard white steps, the whole incident would be completely silent.

It was her belief that the sound of someone falling down the stairs should be a lot louder.

That was when Kaneda's body rolled into her with a level of force that took her by surprise and pushed her down the stairs as well. As she fell backwards, flailing at the hand rail that was within arms reach mere moments ago, it occurred to her that if the stairs are solid then the sound they make is much more muffled than hollow steps. This information wasn't nearly as useful as it thought it was, as she skidded backwards her nails painfully scratching at the wooden railings as she slid down the stairs on her well toned behind. She fell over two stairs like this before she felt herself tip over, her attempts to slow herself down failed and her head painfully hit the cold floor, it was an unpleasant sharp, yet dull dizzying thudding blow. It happened once more before her shapely legs wedged themselves between the wall and the floor and acted as a brake on her natural momentum. She still fell over another step before eventually stopping.

Kaneda, his kinetic energy largely transferred to Sumire via the laws of physics gently rolled to a stop five steps above her.

Groggily, Sumire picked herself up as a few errant pieces of paper continued to fall like autumn leaves and assessed the damage.

One pounding headache, possibly the sign of impending brain trauma.

One ruined set of regulation panty-hose (and good riddance too! She gleefully thought.)

A pair of grazed legs caused by their impromptu use as emergency brakes (and who knows what manner of germs and such like lived on the walls!)

One all encompassing bruise for a body.

Sumire was fairly sure she could make a lawsuit out of this, at the very least, all she needed was an overenthusiastic doctors report and her Civil Order was as soon as gone.

It was then that Kaneda came out of his black out.

There was the taste of blood in his mouth and his eyesight was unfocused, his body refused to move, and considering the amount of pain he was in right now, he didn't want to argue, and his arm felt really odd, he languidly rolled his head to the side, ignoring as best he could the fireworks that set off behind his eyes he saw that his arm was sticking at an impossible angle.

"Ouch." Was all he said before he passed out from the pain.

When Sumire turned round at that single statement and saw the state that he was in, even though she was loathe to admit it, all financial thinking left her head. The first thought that ran though her head was the memory of a store mannequin that she'd pushed down some stairs to see what would happen. It's cheap plastic frame had split and shattered, and by the time it had reached the bottom it was broken. Broken, that was the adjective that came to mind when she saw his body, broken and battered.

She stared in what she would later deny was abject horror at the shattered and unconscious body for a couple of seconds before pulling out her mobile phone, which had miraculously survived the fall and called for a doctor.

( Not a lot actually, one of the few character traits Shinji inherited from his father was fastidious attention to workplace cleanliness. As a result the cleaning staff in the Geofront were some of the best and well paid in the country.)

"But our god is in heaven; he does whatever he pleases…"

                        Psalm 115:3

"No mister Bond, I expect you die!"

The film continued it's course for a further few seconds before Kensuke turned it off with his remote and continued it's presentation.

"Of course this level of laser control has eluded us for many years, but now at last I am pleased to announce that, at long last, Mad Scientist Level Laser weaponry is within our grasp!"

"Ahem" said Shinji, the only person in the presentation hall, a mild sweat drop behind his head.

"I don't think you can call it that Aida-kun."

Kensuke looked down at his presentation notes and took out a small felt marker, he crossed out the words "Mad-Scientist" and replaced them with "Infantry grade". His pen made audible scritch schritch noises in the silence of the auditorium.

"Anything specific you want me to keep out?" Kensuke asked.

"Well… If you could gloss over the fact that the penetrations too high and all it does is leave pin sized hole…"

scritch scritch

"And if you could not mention that the batteries only good for two shots…"

scritch

"Or that if the target is even remotely reflective in any way, you lose between 20 to 100% of the damage…"

scritch scritch scritch scritch

"…then that would be fine."

There was an awkward pause that seemed to fill the silence of the room.

"Do you even have anything left Aida-kun?"

Kensuke looked at the ink stained mass in his hands, and the pile of completely discarded cue cards at his feet.

"Ah what the hell, I'll just confuse them with technobabble like we always do…"

Shinji sweat dropped again.

"Shinji, just why are we asking for money on this project anyway if there are so many faults with it?"

"Because were running out of money for the Sephiroth Device, and they won't give us anymore."

"Ah, financial funny business, say no more."

It was a slow day in Section R, with nothing of interest to make any more remarkable than any other day. In the shadows of his cubicle, Kazuya Nobuichi quietly typed away, as the Project Sub leader, it was Kazuya's task to oversee all of Section R's research whilst Shinji wasn't present, a night person by nature he prowled the division in the quiet dead hours of the darkness, checking up on the progress of the people who gave enough of a damn to work as late as he did. Or in the case of Kensuke, due to certain housing mix-ups, actually lived in the basement. There was a Geek reference right there, Kazuya felt.

Kazuya continued to trawl through the computer logs, searching for something, he had his suspicions that Kensuke had been using the Pleiades to hack again, but he knew by now that he wasn't going to find anything. That was Kensukes specialty, you saw him living on a pile of fallout blankets in your basement, you saw him make an absolute fool out of himself trying to pick up women, and then the hilarious mess that occurred when he got drunk when they rejected him, and he made you drop your guard and view him as harmless, and then he went and hacked the UN Central Mainframe. And no matter what you tried, you can never prove anything, because when it came to Cyberspace, Kensuke is a god.

The worrying thing was, Kensuke wasn't even cleared to use the Pleiades system that night, that was why there was no log whatsoever of the system being used, in fact, all of his diagnostics were telling him that the system had spent the entire night processing Data from Sephiroth.

Kazuya viewed Kensuke as a loose cannon, one he couldn't control, no matter what he did, protected by the one man in this project with more authority than him, and Kazuya hated loose cannons.

This wouldn't be too much of problem for Kensuke, except for one critical factor.

Kazuya Nobuichi worked for SEELE2.

"In the rich man's house, the only place you can spit is in his face..."

- Old Proverb

Space Fortress Gilgamesh continued to turn. As it did so, one man sat on a bench outside one of the numerous Monorail terminals, his hands cupped his face and he was hunched over, his elbows resting on his legs, his expression glum. To his left a shrubbery, dutifully tended by a gardener once every two days, to his right a corridor, down which people walked, after a short period, one such person sat down beside him.

"The question occurs to me, along with a vague sense of déjà vu…" Tenshi said evenly, his eyes never leaving their vague spot facing the wall, his hands unmoving from their spot.

"Why am I doing this?"

The person seemed to think about this for a few moments, before arriving at an answer.

"Because when the army sent a fully fledged G-Man stereotype to your door, you ended up getting curious, so you followed the white rabbit, wanting to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes."

Tenshi leaned backwards and cracked the bones in his neck, he looked at his companion, the man was about his height (which is to say, short) with black hair that was smoothed forward into a spiky quiff. His appearance was youthful, and his eyes were blue, he wore a white labcoat and a name tag that identified him as "Ookara".

"And I'm not in wonderland yet…" Tenshi commented.

Ookara leaned back and put his hands behind his head before replying.

"Not by a long shot…"

"Who are you anyway?" Tenshi asked the diminutive scientist.

"Kunio Ookara, chief designer of EVA series 2, I work for you now."

"Oh?"

It would later arise that Tenshi Yamamoto, was the new Sub-Commander of Gilgamesh, another revelation, for a revealing day.

And Gilgamesh continued to turn.

End of Chapter 4

I just saw Kill Bill 2, Yay! But now on topic, what do you think of the new and improved writing style? I've come to the realization that nothings really happening in these chapters, it's all just setting up the scenario. Well, with a little bit of luck I might be able to get this whole thing started off next chapter. I've also got to stop introducing new characters, I think it's been a good two, three episodes without Rei having any lines at all now... And I haven't even discussed the Katsuragi twins since the beginning. Oog, this is going to get very messy.


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